Microsoft has announced the release of Azure Local
which was designed with three sectors in mind: retail, finance, and
manufacturing. With a vision to help customers operate their own
infrastructure, this platform gives consumers the ability to address all local
requirements, such as storage or compliance and control over their
infrastructure while providing deployment capabilities across multiple
locations. As such Microsoft has addressed the concerns customers have, by
deploying services through the Azure Local offering.
What Azure Local Offers
Hybrid Cloud Solution:
A single Azure ecosystem, providing users services on multiple levels, from on
prem, to edge devices.
Comprehensive Azure Support:
Azure Local has support for various core capabilities deployed across various
sectors, including those listed below.
- Azure
Virtual Desktop. - Azure
Kubernetes Service - Azure
IoT Operations - Deploying
AI models using LLM’s, then applying Azure AI Search for private indexing
and advanced search capabilities.
Data and Monitoring:
Monitoring and tracking metrics is a major part of identifying success, as such
Azure Local has onboard 50+ data collection standard metrics, with additional
customization options within Data Collection Rules.
Integration and Security:
An efficient interface allows for missing of assets from both clouds,
concurrently providing protection over assets in either cloud, to ensure safe
integrations, contests SSO capabilities.
Flexible Hardware Options:
Azure Local can adapt to the market and can be tailored to fit various
workloads spanning from AI to cost efficient edge devices.
VM migration and expansion:
Users have the ability to move virtual machines from on-premises equipment and
broaden VMware environments without requiring large changes in the
applications.
Ownership Model
The difference between Microsoft’s Azure Stack and
Azure Local is in the hardware ownership and management. In the case of Azure
Stack Microsoft holds the hardware thus its subscriptions are not owned by the
customer, Azure Local on the other hand puts full control and management in the
hands of the customer. As a result of this form of ownership businesses are
able to have more control and flexibility.
Industries and Early Adopters
More than 500 organizations from various sectors are
using Azure Local in production including:
Financial Services:
Standard Chartered Bank Healthcare: University of Texas Medical Branch
Government: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Additional Announcements
New features for the Azure AI ecosystem were also
presented by Microsoft including:
Azure AI Content Understanding:
Multimodal feature for document, image, video and audio insight extraction.
Azure AI Foundry:
Single interface to facilitate AI building and application.
General Availability
With the launch of Azure Local, it becomes easier for
organizations to utilize the advantages of cloud and on prem under one platform
as it solves their distributed infrastructure requirement.
